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AMD designs are used as a part of the design, and AMD has shown x86 and ARM chips which fit in the same sockets

by my123 10y ago

mrweasel 10y ago
On the same motherboards? That's rather impressive, if the same motherboard can support two different chip architectures. Having an ARM chip that just happens to use an AM3/AM4 socket is less impressive.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  And it means that presumably you could put a RISC-V or a Power8 in there too. ;- )
- my123 10y ago
  AM4 chips are SoCs which do not need a chipset to work technically
- morganvachon 10y ago
  I'm purely a layman in this space, but I don't see why it would be impossible. Pretty much all modern CPUs are actually SoCs. Modern peripheral connections like PCIe and USB 3 have direct access to the CPU rather than going through custom bridge chips, simplifying board design and making it possible to use the same board for two architectures. Audio and network chipsets don't care what architecture the CPU uses. Again, I'm far from an expert but it seems like a simple enough solution.
  - sounds 10y ago
    As someone with a lot of experience in board bring-up, trust me, the hard part isn't grabbing AMD's reference board, sticking on an audio chip and a wifi chip and sending it over to a board manufacturing shop. The hard part is wrangling the software: BIOS, drivers, testing and more testing, patches, microcode updates. Finding out that your wifi chip vendor has moved the chip to end-of-life just before you were ready to ship would be a non-issue if the software part were faster.
keth 10y ago
Project Skybridge was cancelled as far as I know. [0] Not sure if we see something like that in the future, considering how quiet AMD is about their ARM plans. Although a ARM chip with really good power efficency would be nice below Ryzen. Finally, we’ll note that this roadmap is empty of any mentions of project Skybridge. CEO Lisa Su has commented that AMD has decided to change their focus away from Skybridge based on customer feedback. Customers were telling AMD that they didn't necessarily need socket compatible solutions, so AMD is going to work on differentiated solutions. That said, given that Skybridge was announced last year and planned for 20nm, I suspect that it has also become a victim of the short lifespan (and underperforming nature) of 20nm, leading to it being downplayed in favor of 14nm prodcts. [0] http://www.anandtech.com/show/9231/amds-20162017-x86-roadmap-zen-is-in http://www.anandtech.com/show/9231/amds-20162017-x86-roadmap...

AMD designs are used as a part of the design, and AMD has shown x86 and ARM chips which fit in the same sockets

by my123 10y ago

AMD designs are used as a part of the design, and AMD has shown x86 and ARM chips which fit in the same sockets

On the same motherboards? That's rather impressive, if the same motherboard can support two different chip architectures. Having an ARM chip that just happens to use an AM3/AM4 socket is less impressive.

microcolonel 10y ago
And it means that presumably you could put a RISC-V or a Power8 in there too. ;- )
my123 10y ago
AM4 chips are SoCs which do not need a chipset to work technically
morganvachon 10y ago
I'm purely a layman in this space, but I don't see why it would be impossible. Pretty much all modern CPUs are actually SoCs. Modern peripheral connections like PCIe and USB 3 have direct access to the CPU rather than going through custom bridge chips, simplifying board design and making it possible to use the same board for two architectures. Audio and network chipsets don't care what architecture the CPU uses. Again, I'm far from an expert but it seems like a simple enough solution.
- sounds 10y ago
  As someone with a lot of experience in board bring-up, trust me, the hard part isn't grabbing AMD's reference board, sticking on an audio chip and a wifi chip and sending it over to a board manufacturing shop. The hard part is wrangling the software: BIOS, drivers, testing and more testing, patches, microcode updates. Finding out that your wifi chip vendor has moved the chip to end-of-life just before you were ready to ship would be a non-issue if the software part were faster.

keth 10y ago

Project Skybridge was cancelled as far as I know. [0] Not sure if we see something like that in the future, considering how quiet AMD is about their ARM plans. Although a ARM chip with really good power efficency would be nice below Ryzen. Finally, we’ll note that this roadmap is empty of any mentions of project Skybridge. CEO Lisa Su has commented that AMD has decided to change their focus away from Skybridge based on customer feedback. Customers were telling AMD that they didn't necessarily need socket compatible solutions, so AMD is going to work on differentiated solutions. That said, given that Skybridge was announced last year and planned for 20nm, I suspect that it has also become a victim of the short lifespan (and underperforming nature) of 20nm, leading to it being downplayed in favor of 14nm prodcts. [0] http://www.anandtech.com/show/9231/amds-20162017-x86-roadmap-zen-is-in http://www.anandtech.com/show/9231/amds-20162017-x86-roadmap...